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Monday, 19 March 2018

It must have been fate that as soon as I finally caved in a bought the last neutral for my collection - Chocolate Chip - it should show up in a scrumptious combination at Colour Inkspiration. It's hard to believe now that I've gone over three years without owning Chocolate Chip but now my neutral universe is complete. :-)

This colour palette really appealed to me and as soon as I saw it, I started thinking Petal Palette, probably because both that suite and this inspiration graphic have such dreamy and romantic feels to them. I played around with the suite but ended up with a further exploration of a card I'd made for The Paper Players earlier in the year. I also drew inspiration from the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week.

I stamped the outlines of the blooms and bird in Versamark and Chocolate Chip before colouring them with water and ink. I thought I'd used shimmery cardstock but somehow I'd grabbed a piece of Very Vanilla instead! Fortunately, the paper held up to the treatment it got.

Sunday, 18 March 2018

Last week's 'Any Shade of Pink' colour challenge at The Paper Players produced absolutely fantastic entries. It was hard to pick just one Cut Above! I hope that Nance's CAS Rainbow challenge excites your creativity just as much.

Of course, the tricky part of this challenge is to remember the Clean and Simple part: lots of clean space, limited layers and few embellishments.

Originally, I masked and stencilled this as a one layer card. The problem was that because the pattern of the stencil has gaps in it, the edge of the design was lost and it just looked as though I'd stencilled it crookedly. My solution was to cut the card front into three pieces, trim the white panels by 5mm and attach them to the black base.

In keeping with my original one layer idea, I'd stamped the sentiment directly on to the panel, so added some rhinestones to draw the eye to it. I am happy with the transition of rainbow colours across the card.

We'd love to see what you do with this CAS theme challenge. Here's a reminder of the rules of the challenge.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Sale-a-bration is on and there's a new Special Occasion Catalogue out. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking the SHOP NOW button in the sidebar of this blog.

Tuesday, 13 March 2018

Welcome to a new challenge at Retro Rubber - the challenge that lets you get out all your old favourites. This week, it's a Tic Tac Toe challenge and I'm particularly happy about it because this is the first time ever that I've made up the challenge. So, I've got a vested interest in hoping that you enjoy this challenge!

I've played the middle line - twine, die-cut, green. I've used the limited edition Thoughtful Branches and the associated Beautiful Branches dies from 2016 but I've mixed it up with some new colours and washi tape.

I think that the chance to breathe new life into older stamps by mixing them up with new products is one of the nicest things about Retro Rubber Challenge. It's also a chance to revisit old favourites that have languished behind the new toys.

We'd love to see what you do with this challenge - and I particularly would love to see what you make of the grid. Just make sure you use at least one stamp that's older than a year, give us an indication of how old it is and don't link up to more than ten other challenges.

I'm also taking inspiration from the challenge at The Card Concept. You can link up with this challenge until Monday 19 March. The trickiest part of this challenge is to describe your style. Upon reading the definitions, I think I'm too busy to be Clean and Simple and perhaps not layered enough to be Clean and Layered. So I can only conclude that my card is Clean and Simply Layered!

The gorgeous photo provided inspiration not only in the variety of greens but in the little details such as the twine on the travel tag.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Sale-a-bration is on and there's a new Special Occasion Catalogue out. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat. And, of course, you can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking the SHOP NOW icon in the sidebar or from my Facebook page.

Sunday, 11 March 2018

Joanne has a great colour challenge for us this week at The Paper Players. This is a challenge with many possibilities: soft and romantic, bold and bright, a little bit sassy or something else altogether?

Although I started out with visions of soft, romantic pastels and florals, somehow I ended up in the 'something else altogether' camp!

My Lovely Inside and Out stamp set, which bundles with the Lovely Words dies, has been sadly under utilised. I have someone in the family going through some tough times who lives a long way away, so I was thinking of sending a card to her. This set fits the bill perfectly for that.

I had out on my desk several shades of pink, trying to make one of them speak to me, when I had an 'aha' moment. Why not use them all?!

I used the stitched circle framelit to cut out the 'Hugs' so I could back it with a plain circle. The Flirty Flamingo enamel shapes have sadly retired now.

We'd love to see what you do with this colour challenge. Here's a reminder of the rules of the challenge.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Sale-a-bration is on and there's a new Special Occasion Catalogue out. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking the SHOP NOW button in the sidebar of this blog.

Saturday, 10 March 2018

I was in my room this afternoon playing around with Brusho because I was thinking about a class in using Brusho that I'm running next weekend. I played around with colouring the rose from Beautiful Day and tried layering it up. It turned out so prettily that I made it into a card for the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.

When I was cutting back the second rose for the top layer, I took it one petal at a time to decide how it looked best. I added a gold faceted gem to the centre to tie in with the gold embossing more. The gold washi tape along the diagonal line is sadly retired.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Sale-a-bration is on and there's a new Special Occasion Catalogue out. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand. Just click on the SHOP NOW button in the sidebar of this blog or click on any of the items in the Product List below.

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This blog is where I enter cards and scrapbook pages into competitions but if you want access to Stampin' Up products or my classes, please visit my Facebook Page on the link below, or you can shop with me by clicking the Shop Now button above.